'Memory Artists' offers complicated, intriguing tale

"The Memory Artists" is fictional. Were it not for the bright yellow sticker from the public library on the spine proclaiming it so, I would have believed it to be a true story. Jeffrey S. Moore's avant-garde style of using a third-person perspective, bits of the characters' journal entries and even the endnotes of a "narrator," blurs readers' perception of reality. \nNoel Burun, the book's protagonist, has synaesthesia, an actual condition that allows those who have it to literally see sounds. Their sensory perceptions cross in their minds and they have a "color wheel" of memories that stay with them forever. Noel could recite all of the 1001 Tales of The Arabian Nights, remember the color of his baby bib and relive the moment that he learned that his father committed suicide, daily.\nIn a painful twist of dark irony, Noel's mother, Stella, develops Alzheimer's disease. So he, with the help of his friends -- the sex and drug addict Norval, the slightly autistic and chronically cheerful JJ, the self-absorbed Dr. Vorta and the beautiful, young, former actress Samira -- devises a plan to transfer some of his excess memory storage to his mother.\nThe story is compiled by an anonymous ghostwriter, presumably Moore, for Dr. Vorta. The complexity of the authorship adds to the overall believability of the novel. \n"For over twenty years I studied a fascinating individual (Noel) ... in my numerous monographs and handbooks," Dr. Vorta's foreword reads. "Near the end of our relation-\nship ... (Noel and his mother) came into contact with three participants in memory experiments I was conducting or overseeing (Norval, JJ and Samira). This contact proved serendipitous, the pharmacological equivalent of throwing five volatile compounds into a crucible and coming up with a miracle drug."\nThe characters are as colorful as the spectrum in Noel's mind. Moore does an excellent job of revealing them in unconventional ways. \nI got a sense of Dr. Vorta's grandiosity through his endnotes alone. I learned of Noel's attachment to his "disorder," through his dialogue with Samira when he said, "I have trouble, in fact, conceiving a world in which letters and sounds are neutral, clear, white, whatever. Sometimes, I think those who don't have synaesthesia are missing out on something. Almost like being color blind."\nAnd I solved a mystery of Norval's past by reading a fragment of his novel; Moore allows his readers the opportunity to make their own discoveries about the characters he creates. \nThe novel, "The Memory Artists," is definitely not an easy read. It requires much concentration and constant "flipping" to the endnotes in the back of the book, which can become a hassle. But, it is a welcome change from the usual single perspective writing styles, and it is a fascinating look into several different mental disorders and \nconditions.